In a Word, No

Effective expectation alignment reduces the need to say no to customers. However, in spite of your best efforts, home buyers will sometimes test your boundaries. Skill in saying no when appropriate without losing goodwill is essential to long-term success with customers. Being familiar with a variety of techniques provides the best opportunity to deliver the answer without alienating your customer.

Each of us negotiates through our normal days—often without giving the process much notice or thought. Yet in spite of this nearly constant practice, when faced with a formal negotiation, concerns and stress begin to mount. Great negotiators are not born; they have developed the attitudes and learned the skills needed to master this fundamental human behavior. This class offers an overview of those attitudes and skills to prepare you to succeed whether the negotiation you are in is an ordinary daily matter or a high level business transaction.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this class, as a successful participant, you will be able to:

1. Develop documents and practices to forestall home buyers asking questions to which the answer is no.

2. Analyze customer requests objectively to arrive at common sense responses.

3. Identify creative responses that could lead to an acceptable compromise.

4. Demonstrate how to say no courteously.

5. Establish practices to ensure all service denials are documented.

6. Monitor denials to identify topics that suggest clearer expectations or updated practices are needed.

About the Instructor:

Carol Smith is a customer relations expert with 30 years of experience in the home building, customer relations, real estate, and mortgage industries with homeowners and builders alike. A bestselling author of nearly a dozen books focusing on home building, she founded the Association for Customer Relations Professionals and speaks to standing room only audiences at the International Builders’ Show of the National Association of Home Builders, at state and local builders association functions.